To the Moon and Back: The Life and Times of Project Diana
On January 10, 1946, the US Army successfully bounced radar waves off the moon - the opening salvo in the Space Race, the birth of radioastronomy, and the first Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) communication. The author was just shy of three years old at the time, and her father, E. King Stodola, was scientific director of the team that carried out the experiment, code-named Project Diana.
To mark the 75th anniversary of this historic event, Cindy Stodola Pomerleau has written a series of essays using Project Diana as a lens for examining the transformations and dislocations occurring in the US during World War II and its aftermath. Steeped in good humor and nostalgia, these wide-ranging narratives explore Project Diana's historical, sociological, political, and scientific context, as seen from the perspective of the tiny coastal New Jersey community where fate in the form of Camp Evans deposited her parents and their neighbors.
Scientists and historians of science, engineers, Earth-Moon-Earth enthusiasts, history buffs, and Americana fans will all find something to love in this book. Click here to be notified when pre-ordering information is available.
Cindy Stodola Pomerleau was born in the tiny Jersey Shore town of Neptune in 1943. After earning a doctoral degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania, she directed an Oral History Project on Women in Medicine at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She then pursued an additional degree in psychology and neuroscience and spent the rest of her professional career as a Research Professor in the University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry, with a particular focus on cigarette smoking and nicotine dependence in women.
Whatever else she was doing in life, she continued to write books for adults and children, short stories, and newspaper and magazine articles. Having retired, she now devotes full time to her "postprofessional career" of writing and blogging.
Her comforts during the pandemic include what she calls her 4 "Cs" - her Companion (Ovide Pomerleau, her husband of 55 years), her Cat, her Computer, and her Cooking. Her family means everything to her. She longs for the day when she can once again embrace her two daughters, her two sons-in-law, and her two teenage grandchildren.
